Ethiopia Continues to Deny Online Filtering

Earlier this month, the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) weighed in on an ongoing controversy between the government of Ethiopia and freedom of speech activists in the country.  The ONI, which uses technical testing to assess government-sponsored filtering of the Internet around the world, confirmed that the Internet is being filtered in Ethiopia.

In filtering Web sites critical of the current government, Ethiopia has joined a growing number of countries that filter the Internet for political reasons.  The censors there have notably chosen to block entire blogging domains in order to stifle the community of bloggers there, and in doing so have blocked a large numbers of Web sites and blogs hosted on the same domains.

Blaming technical problems, the Ethiopian government continues to deny wrong-doing and infringement on speech.  This past week however, Amnesty International testified before Congress that the online filtering of Internet content is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of suppression of speech and human rights.

The work of the ONI, which began five years ago, will be presented at the project's first public conference, taking place this Friday at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford.  Stay tuned for podcasts of the conference events.

The ONI will also be launching its redesigned website on Friday, which will include 40 country studies, 8 regional overviews, and much more.

The ONI is a partnership of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge University, and the Berkman Center.